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Time for Govt to bring the cops to heel

Written By: - Date published: 10:43 am, June 29th, 2012 - 53 comments

Looks like the Police have cost us a fortune in an inevitable lawsuit from Kim Dotcom. Not only were the warrants they used to raid his house illegal, they took things they weren’t entitled to even under those illegal warrants. They aggravated this by playing FBI wannabes, causing distress and public humiliation. Then they gave their illegally obtained information to the Yanks.

Pike Road?

Written By: - Date published: 10:27 pm, June 21st, 2012 - 10 comments

A strong safety warning today about sheeptruck disaster met Ministerial indifference from Associate Transport Minister Simon Bridges. He said Australian legislation to promote safety and fairness in the road transport industry was not needed here because “New Zealand already has a system of work time requirements to help manage the risk of fatigue”. More infamous last words from a National politician – but the police are really worried.

Trash talk

Written By: - Date published: 4:32 pm, June 21st, 2012 - 34 comments

So the first car has been crushed. While ministerial grandstanding abounds, a criminologist describes it as “vindictive, malicious, petty and an undignified way of dealing with the problem”.

Police to march?

Written By: - Date published: 11:00 am, June 21st, 2012 - 34 comments

Who guards the guardians if the police march on Parliament?

Police Liaison = Police Trap

Written By: - Date published: 3:16 pm, June 8th, 2012 - 45 comments

Last week I wrote about how the mass arrest of protesters last week was planned by police from the beginning. A couple of days later I was told that 10 minutes before the march a Police Liaison Officer spoke to protest organisers and stated that police were only there to facilitate the march. I have now managed to track down the video of this conversation.

Serco incompetence should put a halt to Wiri

Written By: - Date published: 9:00 am, June 7th, 2012 - 10 comments

A year in to its 10-year, $300 million contract, and Serco is making a real hash of running Mt Eden Prison. A second escape this week, along with two late releases, failure to meet drug testing targets and failure to report as agreed. And this is dealing with mostly only remand prisoners. Why are we spending $900m on an unneeded prison at Wiri for these clowns to run?

Police fail to incite riot

Written By: - Date published: 12:14 pm, June 2nd, 2012 - 142 comments

The police have a number of different strategies for dealing with protest marches. Each has its own known likely result and the police choose their strategy depending on the desired outcome. Yesterday’s mass arrests were not the police responding to something they did not expect to happen. They went into it with a plan to […]

Lessons from Greece

Written By: - Date published: 4:21 pm, June 1st, 2012 - 229 comments

Update 6.45pm: One of lawyers acting for those arrested has just been told by police that everyone arrested will be released without charge in the next couple of hours. That excludes 4 people who have refused to cooperate, presumably by refusing to give their details to police.

Update 9:09pm: John Darroch’s photos from today.

Falling prison numbers

Written By: - Date published: 11:18 am, May 22nd, 2012 - 13 comments

It’s an interesting fact that the one area in which National is going against its traditional approach and moving towards what the experts advocate is prisons. And I think I know why. In education, health, welfare etc National’s ideological positions correspond with cutting spending. But ‘lock em up and throw away the key’ costs. When Bill English called prisons a “moral and fiscal failure” his emphasis was on “fiscal”.

The thinner blue line

Written By: - Date published: 11:16 am, May 21st, 2012 - 19 comments

National is going to cut 125 police staff. They’re not sworn officers but who’s going to pick up the work they were doing? Sworn cops, of course. Course, tying up cops with paperwork will help the crime stats drop. And with the navy so underfunded half its inshore patrol vessels are being mothballed I bet illegal fishing instances drop too. Funny that.

Sinking homicide rate justifies murder spree – PM

Written By: - Date published: 12:21 pm, May 9th, 2012 - 15 comments

The Government’s ‘sinking lid’ on homicides means that John Key can personally garotte 3-5 enemies and the overall number of killings will still decrease, a smiling Prime Minister told journalists today. “On current trends, the number of murders is dropping by half a dozen a year. Which means no-one should mind if I bump off a few annoying arseholes” said Mr Key

NRT: Strapping the chicken on prison privatisation

Written By: - Date published: 11:01 am, May 8th, 2012 - 5 comments

Despite keeping prisoners in prison too long and an escape, Serco’s private management of Auckland Remand has been judged a success by the Government because it has met all the standards set for it. Sounds reasonable. Until you look a layer deeper and discover that the standards Serco has to meet are much worse than what Corrections already achieves.

Decriminalising pot?

Written By: - Date published: 1:32 pm, April 30th, 2012 - 96 comments

With pot related arrests down by half over the last eighteen years, the police have been accused of “decriminalisation by stealth”. It’s probably time to have the debate properly.

Banks’ secret donation from the ‘wide boys’

Written By: - Date published: 6:19 am, April 27th, 2012 - 101 comments

John Banks has had a miraculous change of heart on pokies. He used to say gambling bosses were “wide boys” who “sucked” the people of this country dry. Now, he’s rubbed up against John Key and become ‘relaxed’ about more pokies. Maybe the $15,000 undeclared donation from SkyCity helped. A donor Banks was legally required to disclose but didn’t. Labour’s laid a complaint. Update: donation has been referred to police.

Pokies: the crack cocaine of gambling

Written By: - Date published: 10:09 am, April 21st, 2012 - 111 comments

A sad story in the Herald today of a man who got hooked on pokies. It has destroyed his family and relationships. He’s started ripping off clients at work. All to put money in the machines that SkyCity profits from. SkyCity has so many addicts customers it says it needs more machines. SkyCity is a cancer. We shouldn’t just stop its expansion. We should excise it.

Joyce’s dirty deals: money laundering at SkyCity

Written By: - Date published: 11:05 am, April 17th, 2012 - 30 comments

The Greens have revealed that criminals are laundering millions of dollars through SkyCity, taking their gambling losses as the price of coming out with clean, untraceable money. The Government’s sleazy ‘law for sale’ deal with SkyCity would only make it worse by allowing more anonymous, higher stake gambling on the pokies. Instead, we should be clamping down.

Advice on pokies

Written By: - Date published: 7:20 am, April 5th, 2012 - 83 comments

“Prime Minister John Key says hundreds of extra pokies at Sky City Casino will not increase gambling addiction”. Key is lying and he knows it. That’s why the Nats won’t release the official advice they have received on this topic…

Juking the stats?

Written By: - Date published: 11:50 am, April 3rd, 2012 - 18 comments

The recorded crime rate has been dropping for two decades now mostly due to changing demographics. More good news this year with a 4.8% drop, mostly attributable to a 21% fall in Canterbury. But something’s a little off in these numbers. The number of offences recorded has fallen, yet the percentage solved has fallen even more. Shouldn’t less crime mean more resources to solve the ones that do happen?

We need “operation 9” to suppress the bookies

Written By: - Date published: 12:37 pm, March 30th, 2012 - 22 comments

Evidently the people at iPredict don’t like being called “bookies” or being described as “opening a contract” on someone. We are now being targeted by this shadowy organisation.

Perhaps it is time that the police exerted themselves as the entertainment for the media and started operation 9 against this subversive organisation

You know you’re in trouble when: The bookies open a contract on you

Written By: - Date published: 10:28 am, March 29th, 2012 - 163 comments

You know that bookies sense when there is blood in the water and they’ll create contracts. I don’t gamble but the interesting contracts today in my mind are “Judith Collins to cease being a Minister before 1 June 2012”, “An ACC official ….to be found to have leaked Boag email”, “Beehive staffer to be found to have leaked Boag email”, etc. And a politician is definitely in trouble in NZ when they start talking about defamation 🙂

Ambrose should sue as Police & Key fail Laws 101

Written By: - Date published: 7:10 am, March 27th, 2012 - 56 comments

When a government figure says someone broke a law when there has been no conviction they are effectively imposing an extra-judicial punishment by defaming them. Key and the Police cannot be allowed to serve up extra-judicial punishments to whomever they choose by branding them a criminal and then not taking them to court to prove it.

Tough on crime

Written By: - Date published: 9:22 am, March 26th, 2012 - 85 comments

New Zealand has one of the highest rates of imprisonment in the world, and an international study has just highlighted the fact.

Rortwatch: closing prisons to justify Wiri

Written By: - Date published: 9:15 am, March 23rd, 2012 - 15 comments

1,200 prison beds, 1 in 8, are empty plus the 1,300 bed reserve. Prisoner numbers are projected to keep falling. So, why are the Nats spending a billion dollars on the Wiri private prison? And where will they get the prisoners? By closing existing public prisons. Rather than upgrading what we have more cheaply they’ll let a foreign company make a profit off locking people up.

Meeting a need

Written By: - Date published: 10:05 am, March 9th, 2012 - 25 comments

Can anyone tell me why the Nats are spending $300m to build and $36m pa to run a 960-bed PPP prison when there are 2000 spare beds in the system and prisoner numbers are projected to fall? Or why Joyce is cutting a dirty ‘convention centre for pokies’ deal when international convention numbers are falling? Or why they’re spending $1b a year on low BCR highways when vehicle numbers are falling?

The real crims wear white collars

Written By: - Date published: 9:57 am, February 25th, 2012 - 74 comments

Directorships are the golden ticket in the world of the business elite. You attend maybe 10 meetings a year, sign whatever’s put in front of you, typically get paid $3-4K a pop, and do it over again half a dozen times or more for various companies. It’s a gravy train for managers past their use by date. But customers and shareholders have to trust what directors sign off on.

Key involved in Radio Live show

Written By: - Date published: 10:56 pm, February 14th, 2012 - 25 comments

Watch Grant Robertson’s question to Key today Robertson to Key on Radio Live Key didn’t know his office was deeply involved in the show that breached the Broadcasting Act? Even though he personally chose the guests? It was a matter solely between the Electoral Commission and the broadcaster? Judge for yourself.

Armed police storm Key mansion

Written By: - Date published: 7:00 am, February 10th, 2012 - 25 comments

Armed Police assisted by the Eagle helicopter, the counter-terrorism unit, customs officials, and the police launch towed on its trailer have raided Prime Minister John Key’s Parnell mansion, executing warrants relating to the illegal ‘DJ Key’ election ad. Simultaneously, a joint Police-SAS taskforce has stormed RadioLive, deploying teargas and tasering all present.

Dotcom

Written By: - Date published: 1:51 pm, February 9th, 2012 - 82 comments

There’s a few interesting threads to the Kim Dotcom saga. Should merely providing a tool that can be used for piracy be a crime? Did the alleged offences justify a 70-strong armed police raid or was this more heavy-handed showing off by the cops? And, if Dotcom really is such a bad guy, why did National let him come to live in New Zealand in the first place?

DJ Key broke the law

Written By: - Date published: 8:17 am, February 9th, 2012 - 43 comments

The Electoral Commission’s decision on the ‘DJ Key’ hour on RadioLive has been leaked. It shows that Key’s hour-long DJ spot was an election ad. It’s the only sensible decision. Key was clearly on the show to promote his brand to win votes. He made several political comments. RadioLive now faces a $100,000 fine for perverting our election. And Key’s reputation takes another hit.

Truly touching

Written By: - Date published: 11:57 pm, February 3rd, 2012 - 11 comments

After the horrifying attack on a 5-year old tourist in Turangi in December, Kiwis showed their compassion, and their shame, by donating over $62,000 to the family. Now, the family has said they don’t blame the community and have used some of the donations to fund children’s play equipment in Turangi and medical equipment for the children’s wing of Waikato hospital.

What a riot.

Written By: - Date published: 11:16 am, December 17th, 2011 - 14 comments

A quick post on sentences handed down in the wake of riots in England.